OT - Two from "American Politics Journal" (long)

American Politics Journal
E-mail edition
Nov. 13, 2005

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Hail to the Ostrich!
A Veterans Day Speech
by Steve Young

Steve Young

Nov. 13, 2005 / HOLLYWOOD (apj.us) / The White House decided that this
country's Veterans Day was the perfect day to attack... our veteran's
country.

In doing so, President Bush honored those who sacrificed so deeply to
give us, among other things, freedom of speech. A freedom of speech, so
it seems, only to be used to condemn those who exercise that freedom.
Not only condemn dissenters, but to once again hoist the old the old
right wing chestnut that questioning this President is a slam of the
troops.

In his most recent "I am a uniter" speech, the president said, among
other things, "The stakes in the global war on terror are too high, and
the national interest is too important, for politicians to throw out
false charges. These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our
troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will."

Omigawd. I was kidding. Not a political speech on a day for all
Americans? Still, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the AM
Lords of Loud said that Veteran's Day was the perfect day for that kind
of rhetoric.

"What better time than Veteran's Day to say that the troops need our
support?"

Hello? Hypocrisy? Are you there?!

Wasn't it the same "Lords of Loud" who, when Paul Wellstone's son,
David, stood up at his father's funeral and asked that we not forget the
Wellstone legacy nor stop fighting for it, asked how the Democrats could
be so obscene as to turn a funeral into a political pep rally?

And the president turning a country's remembrance of the our past and
present soldiers into his own political rally? Not a peep of concern
about ill-placed party bashing from the Republican large mouths.

But let's forget the day. Instead let's consider the content.

"While it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct
of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how
that war began."

In other words, it's your right to question me, but irresponsible to do
so. So very constitutional.

"Congress saw the same intelligence the administration did before the
war, and that independent commissions have determined that the
administration did not misrepresent the intelligence."

Well, how do you like that? The only part of that statement that's false
is every part of that statement.

Number 1: The administration had access to much more intelligence than
did Congress. They only received what the President wanted them to see.

Number 2: The independent commissions were not authorized to determine
whether the administration exaggerated or distorted those conclusions.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the only committee actually
investigating the potential distortions AND omissions, has not done its
inquiry yet. In fact, Judge Laurence Silberman, chairman of Bush's
commission on weapons of mass destruction, said when he released his
report on March 31, 2005, "Our executive order did not direct us to deal
with the use of intelligence by policymakers, and all of us were agreed
that was not part of our inquiry."

It's ostrich science, plain and clear -- the process of proving
something does not exist by not looking for it.

Intelligent design follows a similar but more creative discipline adding
a Jabberwockian twist: the proof of something's existence that we cannot
explain is explained by fabricating an explanation.

You might say, if you wanted to dally at all in the truth, that the
President is trying to mislead the American public. How much of a
stretch is it to believe he's done it before... AND with the same issue?

The President claims that those who question him are rewriting history.
Anyone who has ever written professionally knows that you always have to
rewrite fiction. To create something that rings true you have to rewrite
and rewrite until you get it right.

AND MAKE NO MISTAKE, WHAT THIS ADMINISTRATION FED US WAS FICTION.

Just because they pepper it with some facts doesn't make it true anymore
than Monty Python and The Holy Grail was true. It wasn't, was it?

National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley also participated in the
coordinated Veterans Day attack, repeating that "lawmakers all looked at
the same intelligence."

That's so full of bull pies I'm surprised the White House ever has to
buy fertilizer. Bush doesn't share his most sensitive intelligence with
congress. In addition, there were doubts about WMD and the Iraqi threat
that were not included in the info congress got.

For example, the National Intelligence Estimate asserted that Hussein
would not use weapons of mass destruction against the United States OR
turn them over to terrorists unless backed into a corner was cleared for
public use only a day before the Senate vote... and not seen by most
Senators.

Even within the Bush administration, not everybody consistently viewed
Iraq as what Hadley called "an enormous threat." In a news conference in
February 2001 in Egypt, Secretary of State Colin Powell said that
economic sanctions against Iraq had worked and that Hussein had not
developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass
destruction."

In his speech Friday, Bush said that, "When I made the decision to
remove Saddam Hussein from power, Congress approved it with strong
bipartisan support."

The October 2002 joint resolution authorized the use of force in Iraq,
but it did not directly mention the removal of Hussein from power.
Hadley, in his remarks, went further. "Congress, in 1998, authorized, in
fact, the use of force based on that intelligence," he said. "And, as
you know, the Clinton administration took some action."

But the 1998 legislation gave the president authority "to support
efforts to remove the regime of Saddam Hussein" by providing assistance
to Iraqi opposition groups, including arms, humanitarian aid and
broadcasting facilities.

Neither offering the truth nor looking for it. Like I said...ostrich
science. Sticking their heads in the ground so they don't have to look
at the truth...

.... only with these ostriches, to discover where their sticking their
heads, you have to look a bit higher.

Steve Young, author of "Great Failures of the Extremely Successful"
takes the KTLK 1150AM mike every Saturday, 1-4 PM and read every Sunday
in the LA Daily News Op-Ed page (right next to Bill O'Reilly).

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American Politics Journal
E-mail edition
Nov. 13, 2005

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From the editors: This think piece is too good not to pass on. It was
originally published at CorrenteWire
(http://www.correntewire.com/the_founders_the_funders_poho_and_the_miers_debacle).

The Founders, the Funders, PoHo, and the Miers debacle
by Lambert Strether, CorrenteWire

Saturday, Nov. 12, 2005 correntewire.com During the Harriet Miers
debacle, I had a moment of cognitive dissidence. The Winger pundits -
with an alacrity worthy of the most disciplined Stalinist front
organization - had ceased chanting "up or down vote," and viciously
turned on Miers. When they did, Bush pulled the nomination. At the time,
most of us snarked on the metronomic efficiency with which the
Republicans changed the party line (e.g., Atrios
[http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_10_23_atrios_archive.html#113017049205956800]).
Nothing against the good people in the Department of Schadenfreude, but
not a lot of the heavy lifting gets done there, eh?

What I thought was, Who elected these guys? I mean, nobody elected the
pundits. Nobody elected Kristol, or Norquist, Bennett, or Bauer, or
Dobson, or Limbaugh, or any of the Sabbath Day Gasbags. So why was it
that when they cracked the whip, Bush cringed, dropped Miers, and slunk
back to his kennel, whimpering? [Actually, I didn't think "Who elected
these guys," I started framing a post where the headline would be "Hey
George, who's your Daddy?" But that would be snark, and here at Corrente
we don't do snark, as part of our ongoing effort to bring the tone of
American political discourse to a new level.]

So, Who elected these guys? The answer: Nobody. So, what would a power
structure like that implied in the Miers debacle mean for what's
happened to government and our Constitution? And for us? And what is to
be done? The chart below - note well the subliminal message of the color
scheme - is a first cut at building a model that answers that question.


----- Level 4: Elected Representatives -----
-- Level 3: Pundits / Consultants / Press --
------- Level 2: Front Organizations -------
----------- Level 1: The Funders -----------

[see illustration at http://static.flickr.com/33/62489665_b20fd29b8b_m.jpg]

Here's how it worked in the Miers debacle:

The visible part: The pundits (Level 3, blue) told "our" "elected"
representatives (Level 4, grey) to change the line and drop the Miers
nomination, which they did. Now, follow the money. Level 3 gets its
money from front organizations at Level 2 (red) - lots of organizations
with "Family" in their name, or "Values," or "Christian." And Level 2 is
funded by Level 1 (yellow).

Now the less visible part: Level 1 is the Scaifes, the Coors, the Kochs
of this world: A gated community of a dozen or so Winger billionaires:
The funders that fund the fronts. These are the guys that, through their
proxies, are running the country. [As a programmer commented to me once:
"Every programming problem requires a level of indirection to solve."]

Now the less visible backchannel: The Funders fund the Level 2 front
organizations and thus, the Level 3 pundits through one set of (money
laundering) channels, and fund the Level 4 (Republican and DINO) elected
representatives through another set of (money laundering) channels.

So, if the pundits sneeze today, the elected representations know
they'll catch cold in the next election cycle. Hence the alacrity with
which the party line changes, and the speed with which our "brilliant"
Preznit deep-sixed Miers.

So, here we are. Where are we going?

Generally, in comments, I counsel that "being forced to eat half a ***
sandwich is better than being forced to eat a whole *** sandwich." And
Schumer's "small group" (see sidebar at right) definitely wants to make
us eat the whole *** sandwich.

But what if we don't want to eat a *** sandwich at all?

Well, it may be too late for us. As Doctor Sardonicus has pointed out,
it's going to take two generations to take our country back
(http://www.correntewire.com/im_not_trying_to_cause_a_b_big_s_s_sensation)
- just as it took the Funders two generations to steal it and start
wrecking by destroying the Constitution.

So, we need to start writing a multigenerational playbook of our own -
thinking beyond 2006, or 2008. Let's start by using the target diagram
above for an analytical framework, fitting emergent conspiracies
(Shystee -
http://www.correntewire.com/emergent_properties_and_criminal_conspiracies)
and the PoHo (http://www.correntewire.com/comment/reply/715/1696) into
that framework as we go. Know your enemy!

Caveats:

(1) The diagram is simple, but it represents a dynamic, complex system
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_system) that in action is not
predictable. But that's what makes life interesting!

(2) Each level has its own degrees of freedom. For example, individual
actors at each layer may take actions, seemingly small, that affect all
the other layers; for example, Sgt. Joseph Darby. Or Patrick Fitzgerald.

(3) Each level has internal conflicts. Even a DINO may take action that
impacts the Funders, given sufficient local incsentive. (This shows the
genius of the separation of powers. Likewise, not all Beltway Dems are
Washington Generals. (Though all Republicans, as the ruling party, are
complicit in torture.)

(4) PoHo ("political horror") is like pornography - "Oh my God! Look at
that!" - but the outsized and gaudy spectacle is important, because it
happens when conflicts within and between layers occur. The Miers
debacle is definitely PoHo, but it also gave us a brief glimpse inside
the real power structure that's running the country.

That said, let's look at the levels.

(4) Elected Representatives. This is the level of "half a ***
sandwich." Electoral politics - pace anarchists and Chomsky-ites - is
very important; it has a huge - and these days mostly unnoticed - life
and death effect on every day life. This is the level at which Universal
Health Insurance - which is a life or death matter for many - happens,
or not. This is the level that determines whether Grandma eats Alpo or
retires in some kind of dignity.

However, if our country really functioned as a democracy these days.
Well, Al Gore would certainly have been President in 2000. And John
Kerry might have been President in 2004. (We'll never know because Kerry
and his Washington General consultants didn't have the balls to duke it
out after Ohio 2004, even after having solicited the money to do so.)
Anyhow, Level 4 where the reality-based community must fight the
creationists on the school boards - though fighting the developers on
the zoning board is probably just as important.

(3) Pundits/Consultants/Press. These are the opinion shapers,the symbol
makers, the hate object constructors who organize and commodify our
discourse - the shouting heads of the VRWC
(http://www.correntewire.com/glossary#term63). (For some of the players
at this level, see the topic Fascist meme transmitters
[http://www.correntewire.com/thread/fascist_meme_transmitters].) This
level has been well analyzed by Mark Crispin Miller
(http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-0393326780-0 - thanks Leah) who writes
of the press:

>>> It is because the U.S. press has largely shirked its all-important
>>> constitutional duty that we strong believers in American democracy
>>> now feel like exiles in this country. Major public crimes and
>>> glaring improprities take place out in the light of day - a
>>> presidential race subverted, the investigations into 9/11
>>> stonewalled by the White House, preemptive war promoted with
>>> transparent lies or bald delusions - annd yet the U.S. press has
>>> mainly gone about its business, hemming and harrumphing as if such
>>> corruption were quite normal. . Many good reporters are still out
>>> there, but they seem to have a hard time getting space above the
>>> fold, or much time before the camera, with the sort of story that
>>> every good American would want to know and needs to know.

Level 3 is the level where BlogPAC (http://blogpac.org/) is rising fast
- Kos (http://www.dailykos.com/), Atrios (http://atrios.blogspot.com/),
Josh Marshall (http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/), Kevin Drum
(http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/) - but with the objective of
achieving their own autonomy and affecting Level 4 (and not, by
implication, Leve 1. See below.) For example, it's all good that Josh
Marshall writes this today
(http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/006989.php):

>>> What a sorry, sorry, unfortunate president - caught in his lies,
>>> his half-truths, his reckless disregard . caught with, well .
>>> caught with time. Time has finally caught up to him. And now he
>>> doesn't have the popularity to beat back all the people trying to
>>> call him to account. He could; but now he can't. So he's caught.
>>> And his best play is to accuse his critics of rewriting history,
>>> of playing fast and loose with the truth - a sad, pathetic man.
>>> The judgement of history hangs over this guy like a sharp, heavy
>>> knife. His desperation betrays him. He knows it too.

God knows I'd rather have Marshall shaping my discourse than Bob Novak
or Rush Limbaugh, but still. The alternative?

Well, one of my epithet for Bush, "Inerrant Boy," never has caught on,
and that's a shame, not just because it plays on faith-based claims for
the "inerrancy" of the Bible (and hence Bush's complete inability to
admit a mistake), but because, if we were playing charades, it would be
the "sounds like" for "errand boy." And Bush, as our analysis of the
Miers debacle shows, is just an "errand boy" for Level 0.

It's all good that Marshall, Atrios, Kos, even Kevin Drum are working to
bring Bush and the outlaw Bush regime to justice, but that leaves the
winger billionaires who are running the country secure in their gated
communities, doesn't it?

Needless to say, BlogPac is a club that for some reason - Mr. P-Niss?
Our willingness to say "***"? Our proudly amateur status? - we have not
been invited to join. Which is fine by me; I'm with Groucho on this; and
I'm quite content with my cot in the tiny room under the stairs in the
Mighty Corrente Building.

(2) Front organizations. This level is a bit simpler than the previous
two. Level 2 layer pays the players in Level (3). The Federalist Society
lives here, along the the American Enterprise Institute, the Club for
Growth, and a ton of other organizations with brass nameplates on K
Street. This level is simple because in essence its institutions are
throwaway constructs to give the billionaires at Level (1) a way to
launder their money with plausible deniability; they have very little
institutional autonomy. For example, even relatively young universities
like Harvard have existed for centuries, and people will consider taking
action on their behalf for other than instrumental reasons. (This is why
its such an outrageous perversion of language to call the resident
propagandists at Winger think tanks "scholars.") Nobody's ever going to
write of the dreaming spires
(http://www.nas.uk.com/Images/oxford_dreaming_spires.jpg) of K Street.

(1) The Funders. The guys who are funding it all. And why? Because they
hope to own the country, destroy its institutions, destroy the
Constitution, and remake it, and us . How, exactly? Answers differ,
except insofar as it all means nothing good for us. Here we're in the
realm of theocracy and "Christian Reconstruction" - the world of the SIC
(http://www.correntewire.com/glossary#term56) that I don't have time to
write about today (and besides, I just ate).

So I'll just throw out some dots to connect. Not that I'm worried, or
anything.

(a) It's curious that Colorado Springs is at once the capital of the
"Christian Right," and also the home of the heavily "Christian"-ized Air
Force academy, which controls one leg of the country's nuclear tripod.

(b) It's curious that the country's military bases are increasingly only
in Red states.

(c) It's curious that the cities and ports of the Blue states have been
left unprotected against nuclear attack, even after 9/11.

(d) It's curious that another "hitchhiker" on 9/11 besides the Iraq war
was a developing capability to train for, organize, execute, and
plausibly deny torture and concentration camps.

And dots (a)-(d), supra, are the "big picture"-type issues you'd expect
a ruling class - since that's what Level 0 is, after all - to have
weighed in on, don't you think? To have shared their views about? At
cocktail parties round the Beltway, or wherever the private planes are
gathered together? And if you connect those dots, the picture isn't pretty.

I'm not sure what to do about any of this. It does seem clear to me that
becoming better pundits and taking over parts of Levels 3 and 2 is
necessary but not sufficient - and will leave the next generation even
worse off if Level 1 persists as it is currently structure.

But it does seem to me that the extreme concentration of corporate power
and wealth is what enables the billionaires at Level 0 to live in their
gated communities and fund their attack on us and the Constitution.

So I can think of two worthy lines of attack to target Level 0, both of
which will take two generations to play out, and are of a distinctly
non-warlike, leaderless character.

One: At the corporate level, start denying that corporations are legal
persons. That'sour Dred Scott decision. Sure, that's a page from the
right's playbook, but sometimes extremes meet. Winning this one would
put an end to all that nonsense about corporate campaign contributions
being a form of free speech, for starters.

Two - this is inchoate, I need to work it out in more posts -
corporations make their money because of desires we have that they
satisfy with their commodities.

Speculating freely here, but it would be irresponsible not to speculate:

Corporations have seeded our bodies with desiring machines
(http://www.christianhubert.com/hypertext/desiring_machines.html) whose
tropisms can be satisfied only with corporate products. [Corporate baby
food and a bottle on the input end; corporate "Huggies" and "Luvs" at
that the output end. What does it matter that our children's immune
systems are compromised from birth and they walk around in their own
crap if the "bottom line" is at stake?]

To regain our politics from corporate control, we must regain our bodies
from corporate control. (That is what a real "pro-life" politics would
look like, and note that the policy outcome is identical with
"pro-choice"). That's why food is important - why eating a real (tasty,
round) tomato is a political act, just like eating a corporate (square,
cardboard) tomato is. That's why DIY music and art is important. And so on.

Acts that free our bodies from infestations of corporate desiring
machines are good. These acts, though individually tiny
(http://www.correntewire.com/america_the_stoned), collectively weaken
the corporate bottom line, and hence the power of Level 0 over us. [Note
the connection to the AA serenity prayer. "The things I can change" are
never things that others do; only things that I do. Note also that, for
whatever reason, BlogPac isn't exactly covering any of this, or anything
like it.]

So that's a small start for our two-generation playbook. Let's take our
country back from the Funders, and return it to what the Founders, under
the Constitution, intended. Aux Duck Pits, citoyens!

NOTE This whole mishagosss also explains why we have a recipes section.
I notice that Kevin Drum has picked on the importance of food
(http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_11/007545.php).
He just can't say why it's important.


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